maybe that makes sense

[_rck_]

It occurred to me this evening (after a particularly wine-laced meal) that one of the powerful contributions of the de-coherence of cafeteria style spirituality is the way it inoculates on against having one's religious beliefs manipulated for political agendas by others

Comments

[mijopo]

Well, I'm not so sure. I suppose that cafeteria Christianity is more likely to lead to inconsistencies insofar as the belief set is less likely to have been scrutinized for consistency the way a formal set of church dogmas and/or traditions may have been, but how do you get from there to unpredictable behaviour? There may be some prima facie plausibility to the claim that people willing to embrace inconsistent beliefs will behave unpredictably. On the other hand, the anecdotal evidence I have doesn't support it.

[interactiveleaf]

people willing to embrace inconsistent beliefs

In my experience, that includes just about everyone on the planet. Cognitive dissonance seems to be a specialty of ours.

Also, there is the other thing to be considered: we use "god" and "church" as echo chambers to validate what we're going to believe anyway.

[_rck_]

(a) I know that Wikipedia has only an entry for Cafeteria Christianity, but the term can be used in a much broader sense of Cafeteria Religion (or even Spirituality), which is the one I am aiming here for

[interactiveleaf]

This is brilliant. May I repost?

[_rck_]

Please do. All feedback and criticism welcome.